The Legion of Flame (The Draconis Memoria #2)

“Come now, Hezkhi,” Krizelle said, laying a calm hand on his shoulder, taking a firmer grip until he stopped kicking. “What have we learned about anger?” she asked him.

The boy’s lips formed a momentary snarl as he prepared a scornful reply, but something in Krizelle’s kind but implacable gaze made him reconsider. “Anger is the barrier to clarity,” he mumbled.

“Quite so.” Krizelle knelt and retrieved the twisted crystal ring from the grass, holding it up for critical inspection. “What were you trying for?” she asked Hezkhi.

“A snake,” he said, affording the ring a sullen, accusatory scowl. “It ate itself.”

“Too many facets.” Krizelle ran a finger over the surface of the misbegotten snake. “You’re trying for too much detail. Remember these shapes are grown, not crafted. You have to let them find their own way.” She reached into the pocket of her robe and came out with a small vial. “Try again. I’ll guide you.”

“Blood-blessed,” Clay realised, watching the boy drink the product. “Zembi found another one?”

“Not just one.” Kriz nodded to her right, Clay turning to see a dozen or so more children near by, all engaged in the same activity. He estimated their ages varied from as young as seven to thirteen and their attempts to produce crystal sculptures weren’t much better than Hezkhi’s.

“Despite the . . . unfortunate incident at the Assembly,” Kriz said, “or perhaps because of it, Zembi was granted authority to seek out others like me.”

“He adopt them too?” Clay asked, seeing the obvious affection on her face as she gazed at the Blood-blessed youngsters.

“No,” she said. “But they still called him Father, nevertheless.”

A loud chiming sound came from above, Krizelle and the children all looking up towards the city’s summit in response. “It appears Father needs me,” she said, giving Hezkhi a final pat of encouragement before moving towards the nearest flight of stairs. “Stay here and finish the lesson. I’ll see you at supper.”

“He must have finished another monster,” the boy said, dropping his misshapen artwork to the grass and starting after her. “Let me come, Krizelle. I want to see.”

“No!” Krizelle’s tone was sharp enough to freeze the boy in place. “And they’re not monsters,” she added, in a softer tone, then pointed at the fallen sculpture until Hezkhi sulkily went to retrieve it. “Remember, let the crystal find its own way,” she reminded him before starting up the stairs.

Kriz and Clay followed her as she ascended successive tiers, exchanging numerous greetings with the people she passed. Although Clay saw none of the fear exhibited by the Assembly members, there was a notable deference in their demeanour, as if Krizelle, despite her youth, held some kind of authority here.

“Were you in charge or something?” he asked Kriz as they climbed.

“No, I held no formal position, except as tutor to the children. But informally . . .” She trailed off, face clouding as she watched her younger self turn a corner. “The more Father lost himself in his studies the more remote he became. Sometimes he wouldn’t appear for weeks. Since I was the only one to see him with any regularity, I became a conduit of sorts, his link to the rest of the Enclave.”

He guessed where Krizelle was leading them before he saw it, the unadorned rectangular building rising from a broad plaza of tiled stone. He was immediately struck by how different it looked, not just the people but the light. The orange glow of the lower tiers had disappeared, replaced by a soft white light cascading from above. Raising his gaze, he saw a crystal, far larger than any he had seen before, slowly revolving above the summit of the city.

“So you had your own sun here too,” he said, pausing to shield his eyes as he took in the sight. Despite all he had seen the wonder of it was still jarring. “How do they do that?” he asked Kriz. “Just hang there like that.”

She halted the memory, freezing the crystal’s slow rotation. “Would you like the scholarly explanation or the simple one?” she asked.

“Simpler would be better.”

“Very well. I don’t know. None of us did. Not even Father.”

Clay squinted at her. There was a faintly sheepish smile on her lips, eyebrows raised as if she were confessing a minor lapse of some kind. “What d’you mean?” he said. “Your people built all this. Built that place beneath the ice. How can you not know?”

“We didn’t make the crystals, Clay. We found them. We knew only what they did. We knew that if they were placed in proximity to a powerful heat source they would float in the air and exude a light that could both heal and nourish vegetation. That’s how we recovered from the Event, the crops grown with the crystals saved us and the settlements that cultivated them became the foundation of our civilisation.

“We also knew that, if subjected to sufficient force, the crystals could be persuaded to adopt different shapes. And we knew that they had fundamentally altered drake, and as it transpires, human biology. But how they did it.” She shrugged and turned away, unfreezing the memory and following her teenage self towards the building. “That we never knew. I sometimes think that’s what made Father . . . become what he became. For him, an unsolved mystery was always the worst torment.”

As they approached the building the familiar symbol above the entrance came into view. “What does it mean?” Clay asked, pointing at the upturned eye. “Keep seeing it everywhere.”

“The emblem of the Philos Caste. Philos meaning knowledge in the ancient pre-Event tongue.”

“And Devos and Veros?”

“Devos is the archaic collective term for the pantheon of pre-Event gods. In our time it’s become synonymous with those who serve the Benefactors. Veros, which translates literally as Overlord, now pertains to those who ascend to senior roles in the Assembly.”

They followed Krizelle into the building and down the deep stairwell to the chamber with the three domes. Once again it was different, the domes were there but the light that emitted from the apertures in their roofs was all the same colour. Krizelle led them towards the largest of the three domes, Clay feeling his heart quicken as they approached even though he was pretty sure he would find no White in residence this time.

“Are you alright?” Kriz asked, sensing his distress.

“Yeah,” he said, marvelling at his ability to sweat in a trance. “I’m just fine.”

The dome interior was not how he remembered it either. Instead of the glass floor there was a matrix of walkways, some level, some sloping down to the vast space below. In Clay’s time the space below the dome had been filled with drake eggs, but now it was sectioned off into a honeycomb-like series of glass-roofed, hexagonal rooms. He could see shapes beneath the glass, four-legged, long-tailed shapes. Some prowled back and forth whilst others lay unmoving.

Drakes, Clay realised, seeing the unmistakable form of a Green languidly coiling its tail below. It was smaller than its modern cousins, but still substantially larger than those he had encountered in the forest.